"The World Is Your Laboratory..."

John Conway describes paleontography as "a new discipline, made up by me — which largely doesn't exist yet." Finding flat anatomical diagrams to be an inadequate outlet for his love of flying dinosaurs, the artist has fleshed out his fascination with three-dimensional speculative renderings and lush two-dimensional paintings of pterosaurs as they may have appeared in the wild. The image above is from an imagined dissection of Rhamphorhynchus, a long-tailed critter from the Jurassic period.

The Six of Swords points toward a departure from known realms into the unknown. It's the type of journey you embark on when you've learned everything you possibly can from your current environs. Perhaps it's a natural phase in your evolution -- you've become too big a fish for this small pond. Or perhaps you simply haven't found the answers you're seeking and feel compelled to seek them elsewhere. Any such departure requires you to leave a lot of obsolete ideas and articles behind, but as the Waite-Smith version of this card illustrates, your knowledge and wisdom (in the form of the swords) accompany you whether the waters be smooth or rough.

By marrying a scientific endeavor to an artistic one, Conway explores the terrain between those two worlds. If you attempt to mix the perfect cocktail of reason and imagination, you too may transcend the limitations of your immature impressions and discover that the world is your laboratory, fertile with possibilities and primed for experimentation. [Via]

This Card Previously On Arcanalogue...